By Stephen M. WaltStephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

December 17, 2012

I suppose I could be flattered that William Kristol is trying to use my endorsement to derail Senator Chuck Hagel’s candidacy to be the next secretary of defense. But in fact I’m disgusted, because Kristol’s predictable hatchet job depends on the false charge that my co-author John Mearsheimer and I are "Israel-haters." It is, to be blunt, a shameful lie. It is also a revealing glimpse into how Kristol thinks and operates.

Here’s Kristol’s problem: Hagel is a decorated Vietnam veteran who was wounded twice in the service of his country. Instead of helping cause wars from the sidelines like Bill does, Hagel fought with bravery on the battlefield. He’s also a Republican with ample experience in national security and intelligence matters whose judgment President Obama respects. Hagel has been quite supportive of Israel throughout his public career, and his views on many Middle East topics are similar to those of prominent Israeli officials. But he hasn’t been as slavishly devoted to Israel as fanatics like Kristol would like, and he’s skeptical about the merits of a war with Iran (as are many Israeli experts). Hagel also said openly he "was a United States senator, not an Israeli senator," and that his primary responsibility is to serve the American national interest, not Israel’s. This statement would disqualify him were he in the running to be Israel’s minister of defense, but it is precisely what you’d expect a loyal American to say.

Well, if you’re Bill Kristol and you can’t find any legitimate grounds to oppose Hagel, what do you do? You smear him. You try to convince people that Hagel’s perfectly sensible views are really a manifestation of some sort of hidden anti-Semitism. Since Hagel has never done or said anything to support such a vicious charge, you have to use the well-known McCarthyite tactic of guilt-by-association. How? Point out that yours truly blogged that his nomination would be a "smart move."

See how it works? Someone who has previously been falsely smeared as anti-Israel thinks Hagel would be a good choice, so Hagel must be a nasty piece of work too. Of course, the charges against me are equally baseless — and I’ll bet Kristol knows that quite well — but factual accuracy is not his concern. The sad fact is that if someone displays the slightest degree of independent thought on the subject of U.S.-Israel relations, they’ll get falsely smeared. And then if that person says anything favorable about anyone else, that statement will be used to smear the others too. The goal, of course, is to silence or marginalize anyone who doesn’t fully support the current "special relationship" and prevent a full and open debate about its merits.

President Obama hasn’t shown a lot of backbone on this issue in the past, and it’s possible that Kristol and the other hardliners who are now spewing falsehoods about Hagel will get the White House to blink. It’s also possible that Obama will prefer a less traditional defense and foreign policy team and will opt for somebody else for that reason. The rumors about Hagel may even have been a clever White House ploy to provoke Kristol and the other neocons into their usual frenzy, thereby exposing their monomania about Israel once again and discrediting future efforts to oppose a more sensible U.S. policy in the region.

But what this incident really reveals is how desperate Kristol & Co. are becoming. Having conceived, cheer-led, and then bungled the disastrous Iraq war, their credentials as foreign policy "experts" are forever tarnished. They’ve used the "anti-Semitism/Israel-hater" charge so often and so inaccurately that it is losing its power to silence or deter, and defending the "special relationship" will be more and more difficult as Israel drifts rightward and hopes for a two-state solution fade into oblivion.

These trends will force Kristol and those who share his views to use even more despicable tactics to defend an untenable status quo. So I wouldn’t expect them to abandon the art of the smear anytime soon. At this point, what else have they got?